A GROUP of scientifically minded children have won £1,500 worth of play equipment for their school by discovering ants have a sweet tooth.

The team of young scientists from St Aloysius Primary School, Woodstock Road, were taking part in the Big Science Event at Science Oxford Live.

Judges were so impressed with their investigation that ten-year-olds Thomas Bradley, Hamish Harrison-Cushing and Rodolfo Neils-Gervasio won the competition, beating teams from 13 primary schools
from across the county.

Their efforts have won £1,500 worth of playground equipment for their school from Playforce.

School science co-ordinator Maxine Baker said: “After they had done the project, they gave a presentation to their class and they asked lots of questions about the project and there were some they
couldn’t answer, such as whether they tried the investigation with different species of ants. So they decided to go out and test some of the theories based on some of the questions from the class.

“It was absolutely fantastic, I was really impressed by their work.”

Hamish, from North Oxford, said the trio had chosen the project after looking up similar investigations on the internet and adapting it.

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He said: “It was interesting and we found a lot of ants. I went to my Cubs before we started and asked some of them if they liked sweet or salty food best and they thought ants would like salty
food best, so the result was a bit of a surprise.